MIAMI, United States (AFP) — A former US Air Force sergeant who killed his wife and two young children is to be executed by lethal injection in the southern state of Florida on Thursday.

Edward Zakrzewski, 60, pleaded guilty to the June 1994 murders of his wife, Sylvia, son Edward, 7, and daughter, Anna, 5.

His wife was beaten with a crowbar, strangled with a rope and struck with a machete.

The two children were hacked to death with the machete, which Zakrzewski had purchased during his lunch break after being informed that his wife planned to divorce him.

Zakrzewski fled to Hawaii and changed his name following the murders but turned himself in four months later after being identified by friends on a television show called “Unsolved Mysteries.”

Zakrzewski is to be executed at 6:00 pm (2200 GMT) at the Florida State Prison in Raiford.

There have been 26 executions in the United States this year, the most since the 28 executions of 2015.

Twenty-one have been carried out by lethal injection, two have been by firing squad and three by nitrogen hypoxia, which involves pumping nitrogen gas into a face mask, causing the prisoner to suffocate.

The use of nitrogen gas as a method of capital punishment has been denounced by United Nations experts as cruel and inhumane.

Florida has carried out the most executions in 2025 — eight.

The death penalty has been abolished in 23 of the 50 US states, while three others — California, Oregon and Pennsylvania — have moratoriums in place.

President Donald Trump is a proponent of capital punishment, and on his first day in office called for an expansion of its use “for the vilest crimes.”